


Love Is

by RamonaDecember



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Falling In Love, M/M, Questionable Past Relationships, Unexplored Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29612112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RamonaDecember/pseuds/RamonaDecember
Summary: What was supposed to be a light-hearted conversation to distract Cullen from spiraling guilt gets unexpectedly deep, but inspires hope.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Love Is

**Author's Note:**

> original featured in my [cullrian prompt collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23265598/chapters/55714732), I thought this was nice as it's own quick, standalone piece and so the 'chapter' has been deleted from there and turned into such. C:
> 
> from the prompts:  
> "Can you promise no one else has to get hurt?" + "Do you even know what love feels like?"  
> [original tumblr post](https://ramonadecember.tumblr.com/post/619296995882024960/48-50-for-the-angst-list-i-wanted-to-send-more?is_related_post=1)
> 
> slight warning: mentions of… past coercive relationships? I guess is a good way to put it? cullen’s romantic history is kind of a mess.

“The things we do for love.” 

“The things love does to us.”

The evening had started with the lot of them in the main hall toasting to their success against Corypheus, but now it was Cullen and Dorian alone in the mage’s quarters, knocking their glasses together over the latest sentiment before downing the rest of their drinks.

Earlier, Dorian had watched as Cullen slipped out one of the side doors of the main hall and into the garden without a word, and because of his propensity for curiosity and seeming inability to leave Cullen alone for long, Dorian had followed as well. He found Cullen tucked away on a bench mostly obscured by shadows, sitting with his head in his hands, only to raise it when Dorian startled him by sitting down next to him.

“Needed a bit of air?”

Cullen nodded. “In there, it’s…” It took a moment for Cullen to decide how to phrase it until he settled on, “It’s a bit much.”

Dorian didn’t comment on the fact it had been a rather subdued, intimate affair, he thought he knew what Cullen was getting at, so instead he _did_ comment on the fact they were a stone’s throw away from his room, a room that was always supplied with at least a few bottles of something. Cullen had said it wasn’t necessary and tried to apologize for pulling Dorian away from the celebration, saying they could go back, but though he stood and motioned back toward the hall, he made no move to go back that way. Dorian waved it off, and when he stood as well, looping his arm through Cullen’s, Cullen didn’t object to being led away and toward the mage's quarters instead.

Cullen opened up more once he had a glass pressed into his hands. He confessed that he knew they had much to celebrate—the war was over, they had _won_ —but that he couldn’t stop his mind from going to all they had sacrificed to get there, to all who weren’t there to share in the revelry with them. Dorian decided another healthy pour of the dark liquor he’d been plying Cullen with was in order after that.

Conversation drifted to one of the other reasons the get together in the main hall had seemed so stifling, and that was because despite how much their dear Inquisitor tried to act like she was fine, she was barely holding it together.

Everyone knew what had happened—the dust settled on the final battle, they started to regroup, and there was one particularly notable disappearance. Solas was gone. Up until that point, Lavellan had convinced herself that it could still work out, but that was the final nail in the coffin that was her romantic daydreams. She’d declared him dead. Others, thinking they were helping, tried to assure her not to give up hope, that he could just be loss in the mess that was the aftermath of such a large fight, but Lavellan only shook her head and even more firmly stated that he was dead.

Which is how Cullen and Dorian arrived at their most recent toast. It had Cullen wincing and Dorian letting out a snort of a laugh.

“I envy her in a way,” Dorian said, swirling his freshly poured drink around the glass. “Able to cut him out so effectively like that. Andraste knows I’ve made a fool of myself trying to cling to what I should have run from long prior, all because I called it love.”

“Love hasn’t tended to work out in my favor in the past,” Cullen agreed. “You put your faith in someone, your trust, and then…” Inevitably, in Cullen’s experience, they let you down. He shrugged it off, taking a swig of his drink.

Dorian frowned, moving from the arm chair he’d curled himself up in to sit next to where Cullen had perched himself on the edge of the bed. He rested his head on Cullen’s shoulder, letting out a dramatic sigh, and for a moment they both sat there in silence, lost to their own thoughts.

When Dorian elaborated on some of his more failed attempts at winning love, it was supposed to be a way to lighten the mood, even if that particular flavor of self-deprecation brought with it a lot of daddy issues and past regrets. He never meant for Cullen to feel like he had to share anything in exchange, but the alcohol loosened lips.

It started innocent enough with Cullen claiming his very first heartbreak was as a child when, after working so hard to win the favor of a neighbor girl, she chose someone else as her 'champion' when they were playing at knights at a tourney. Dorian couldn’t quite disguise his snort or mumble of _valiant since birth_ behind his glass, but Dorian’s laughter died out the more they swapped their tales of woe, the look of concern on his face growing instead.

Cullen confessed how it took him far too long to learn that a Circle mage under his watch could never truly, freely be able to return his affections, and while Dorian winced, it was Cullen said—he _had_ learned. Dorian knew _he'd_ like to think over a decade of time left plenty of opportunity for growth in person, he was sure Cullen would like to believe that as well.

Dorian tried to distract from whatever spiral that seemed to be sending Cullen’s thoughts down with a more light-hearted story that ended with a sigh of, “You think you know somebody,” but it only ended up pulling Dorian’s concern in a different way when Cullen nodded his head along in agreement.

“Like when the man you once loved—“ probably still did, even if it wasn’t in the same way “—surfaces again as the right hand man to some darkspawn magister?”

Dorian’s eyebrows shot up and he pulled back a little to better look at Cullen. “Are you saying that you and that fellow currently occupying a cell in the dungeons were once…”

“Once, yes.” When Cullen was first reassigned to Kirkwall, most everyone was still treating him like he was damaged goods, but never Samson. He always knew that what Cullen needed wasn’t to be handled as fragile and liable to fall apart at any moment, even when Cullen himself tried to use it as an excuse. “We… drifted apart,” Cullen added with a shrug. Samson being ousted from the Order may have had much to do with it, and then when Cullen left Kirkwall, he left behind any shreds of a relationship that might have remained as well. That, and, “The then-Knight-Commander made it… difficult to maintain anything as well.”

“Relations are discouraged amongst Templars?”

“It wasn’t that she was actively discouraging that relationship but rather trying to… promote a different one.” A crimson blush washed over Cullen’s face, he was sure Dorian knew what he was getting at.

“With _that_ woman?” Dorian may not have known her personally, but in the past he’d gleamed enough information from Cullen and others to form his own opinion of Knight-Commander Meredith. “But she was your superior.”

Cullen grimaced, and Dorian thought maybe that was how Cullen realized what he did about the way he’d chased the affections of that mage.

“I was a good distraction to her,” Cullen said, and Dorian could understand that, everyone could use a little fun, even uptight Templars, but Cullen wasn’t finished and it made all the difference. “It was for the best. If she was otherwise preoccupied then she—well—there was this sort of… implied promise that no one else could get hurt.”

_No one but you, you fool_ , Dorian thought. “Cullen…” he managed to say instead. Of course Cullen, always the self-sacrificing one, would offer himself up like that if it meant taking the attention off of others.

“I really do think that she loved me in the end,” Cullen said, ducking his head. “In her own way.”

“You call that _love_? Andraste’s tits, Cullen—“ Dorian sounded properly horrified. “Do you even know what love feels like?” He may be no expert himself, but he knew it wasn’t _that_ , it wasn’t whatever Cullen was describing.

Dorian hadn’t meant to come off that harsh, but he was aghast at what Cullen was telling him. A wash of guilt came over him when he watched Cullen’s face fall.

Cullen’s eyes dropped down to the glass clutched in his hands as his hands as he turned it about, like the dark liquor might offer him up an appropriate response, but seeing as it’s what helped start this conversation in the first place, he doubted it. “I’d like to think I do now,” he said with a flicker of eyes back up at Dorian, reaching out to rest a hand on Dorian's knee.

Love felt a lot like taking time out of busy days to get a moment with each other, like chess matches with silences that didn’t need to be filled. It felt like leaving bits and bobs for the other because they thought it might make them smile, and exchanging well-loved copies of favorite books. It felt like an offer for quiet conversation when everything was ‘a bit much.’

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorting through my collections and might do this with a few other longer prompt fills too. we shall see.
> 
> [tumblr](https://ramonadecember.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/RamonaDecember) | [cullrian discord](https://discord.gg/C4rTPHHx3B)


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